Exam View: 07 May 2018 Current Affairs

Current Affair of 07 May 2018. Read Important Current Affairs for UPSC/SSC/Bank and other state exam

NATIONAL

Govt launches NWIC to maintain water data

The government has set up a central body – National Water Informatics Centre (NWIC) – to maintain a comprehensive water resources data.

It will be a single window source of updated data on water resources in India.

The NWIC will also collaborate with leading national and international research institutes to provide technical support to central and state organisations dealing with water emergency response of hydrological extremes.

The NWIC will work under the Union water resources ministry as its subordinate office. It’ll be headed by a joint secretary level officer.

Delhi to host Festival of Bharat

National capital Delhi will host a six-day-long Festival of Bharat between May 9 and May 14 as a 21st century tribute to the majesty and depth of India’s civilization.

The event will be held at the Scheduled between 9th May and 14th May at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Scholars, Grammy award winning artistes, rising new stars and prominent public figures will also be in attendance.

BRO to celebrate its 58th Raising Day

Border Roads Organisation will celebrate its 58th Raising Day on May 7 to mark the glorious services to the nation.

BRO, a leader in the arena of infrastructural development in the border areas of the country, was established in 1960.

Since its inception the organisation has gone from strength to strength, and numerous projects undertaken by them has been vital for the territorial integrity.

‘Star Khel Mahakumbh’ Launched At HP

The event aims to attract participation of at least one lakh youth from Thakur’s Hamirpur constituency

The initiative has been designed in a manner as to attract participation of at least one lakh youth from across 5000 villages and 800 panchayats.

The athletes will compete in volleyball, basketball, cricket, football, kabaddi and athletics.

INTERNATIONL

NASA launches InSight spacecraft to Mars to study Red Planet’s quakes

InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander, designed to give the Red Planet(Mars) its first thorough checkup.

It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core

Studying Mars’ interior structure answers key questions about the early formation of rocky planets in our inner solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – more than 4 billion years ago, as well as rocky exoplanets. InSight also measures tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars today.

This mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program for highly focused science missions that ask critical questions in solar system science.

This is the first launch to another planet from the West Coast.

The key instrument on board is a seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, made by the French Space Agency.

It(InSight) will use seismology (the study of quakes) to determine the makeup and structure of the Red Planet’s core, mantle, and crust.

After the lander settles on the Martian surface, a robotic arm is supposed to emerge and place the seismometer directly on the ground.

The second main instrument is a self-hammering probe that will monitor the flow of heat in the planet’s subsurface. Called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, it was made by the German Space Agency with the participation of the Polish Space Agency.

BUSINESS

India topped list of fastest growing economies

According the Centre for International Development at Harvard University (CID) said in new growth projections that countries that have diversified their economies into more complex sectors, like India and Vietnam, are those that will grow the fastest in the coming decade.

India tops the list as the fastest growing country for the coming decade, at 7.9 per cent annually, in the economic complexity growth projections.

The researchers also found India to be the best on Complexity Opportunity Index, which measures how easy it is to redeploy existing knowhow to enter new complex products.

SPORTS

Indian athletes bag 11 gold in South Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Colombo

Indian Athletes have won 11 gold, 10 silver and 3 bronze medals in the South Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Colombo.

On an opening day, Arshdeep Singh provided India the first gold medal of the day in the junior men’s javelin throw event.

In junior women’s shot, Kiran Baliyan won gold.

Lokesh Sathyanathan won the gold for India in the long jump final while in 100m hurdles Sapna Kumari also bagged gold medal.

Durga Deore in 1500 metre race grabbed gold while in 4x100m relay races, Indian junior men won gold. Women’s team delivered a silver medal in the event.

LIFE

GravityRAT

GravityRAT is a malware allegedly designed by Pakistani hackers, which is designed to infiltrate computers, steal the data of users, and relay it to command and control centres in other countries.

The ‘RAT’ in its name stands for Remote Access Trojan.

the latest update to the program by its developers is part of GravityRAT’s function as an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), which, once it infiltrates a system, silently evolves and does long-term damage.

What is it?

The RAT was first detected by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, on various computers in 2017. It is designed to infliltrate computers and steal the data of users, and relay the stolen data to Command and Control centres in other countries.

RAT is a program capable of being controlled remotely and thus difficult to trace.

What make it different from other Malwares?

GravityRAT is unlike most malware, which are designed to inflict short term damage. It lies hidden in the system that it takes over and keeps penetrating deeper.

GravityRAT has now become self aware and is capable of evading several commonly used malware detection techniques,

One such technique is ‘sandboxing’, to isolate malware from critical programs on infected devices and provide an extra layer of security.

Typically, malware activity is detected by the ‘noise’ it causes inside the Central Processing Unit, but GravityRAT is able to work silently.

It can also gauge the temperature of the CPU and ascertain if the device is carrying out high intensity activity, like a malware search, and act to evade detection,

The other concern is that the Command and Control servers are based in several countries. The data is sent in an encrypted format, making it difficult to detect exactly what is leaked.

How does the Trojan enter the system?

GravityRAT infiltrates a system in the form of an innocuous looking email attachment, which can be in any format, including MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat or even audio and video files.

The hackers first identify the interests of their targets and then send emails with suitable attachments. Thus a document with ‘share prices’ in the file is sent to those interested in the stock market. Once it is downloaded, it prompts the user to enter a message in a dialogue box, purportedly to prove that the user is not a bot. While the users take this to be a sign of extra security, the action actually initiates the process for the malware to infiltrate the system, triggering several steps that end with GravityRAT sending data to the Command and Control server regularly

What should be done?

People shoud follow basic cyberhygiene like watching what they downloading, Like if they are downloading a pdf and updating their anti-virus software and conducting cyber security reviews regularly.